Snow job

First, I know it has been way too long since I have posted anything to the blog. It has been a particularly hectic period in work and professional life, not even slowing down as it often does around Christmas and New Year’s. By the way, Happy New Year to all and warmest wishes for a successful and prosperous 2011. We were able to escape Ohio for a few days to visit with Rita’s family down in Kentucky over Christmas. Ironically, their more southern clime got hit by anywhere from four to six inches of snow, while the home base escaped relatively dry.

Speaking of snow, while watching the Gotham media a little more closely than I have in the past, we are now seeing some of the real reasons why it took so long for the snow to get plowed from New York City’s streets. Turns out the sanitation workers’ union bosses ordered a slowdown as a cruel protest against long overdue pruning of city budgets. This is just the latest, and deadly, example of the folly of public employee unions.

Even the liberals’ patron saint, FDR, knew this was a bad idea. “… Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations … The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for … officials … to bind the employer … The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives …

“Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people … This obligation is paramount … A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent … to prevent or obstruct … Government … Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government … is unthinkable and intolerable.”

Let’s go a step further. Not only is it unwise to have a sanitation workers’ union, why must it be assumed that government has to be involved in trash pickup anyway? (I will refrain from making any crude jokes here, tempted though I may be.) As Michelle Malkin points out in her fine blog post today, privatizing this function can be a significant cost saver in large cities. So why don’t more cities go this route? Oh, yeah. Powerful union thugs. See, FDR was right. Meanwhile, cities and states drown in debt by providing services that the private sector can provide more economically, telling us whether or not we can have Happy Meals with toys inside, etc., etc. And who bails out the cities and states? Uncle Sam Moneybags — that’s you and me.

While I’m rolling the snowball down the hill….

Time magazine — which ought to be worth at least $1.50 to someone if Newsweek was bought for a dollar — actually had the temerity to post an item on their site this week titled Holiday Blizzard: More Signs of Global Warming. Huh?!?!? This drivel is nothing more than warmed over (sorry, I could NOT resist that pun!) recitations of fabricated anthropogenic climate change arguments that sag under their own weight and require conspiracy to keep them afloat.

OK, I have let off enough steam for now. Yes, there are plenty more puns where that came from. I need to hoard them, because I can tell it’s going to be a long winter.